Chapter Eighteen.

Chapter Eighteen.“Anthony Miles is gone to London,” said Mr Robert Mannering, walking into the library of the Red House, on the day following that described in the last chapter.Mr Mannering looked with a shiver at the door his brother had left open behind him. He had a cold, and a great many theories about its treatment.“I don’t know what good he can do himself by going up,” added Mr Robert in a perturbed tone.“He will be able to see Pitt,” suggested Mr Mannering, drawing nearer the fire.“I wish I could feel there was any chance of his convincing Pitt. It’s a bad business, Charles.”Mr Mannering looked up with a little surprise; for although his brother frequently indulged in cynical speeches, he had never yet known him to believe in them, or take anything but a largely hopeful view of individualised human nature.“My dear Robert—would you object to shutting the door?—”“I beg your pardon,” said Mr Robert hastily, doing as he was requested with an abstracted bang, which made Mr Mannering wince. But he went on.“Look calmly at the matter. What do we know of the contents of that letter? How is it possible to judge of the terms in which the suggestion was made?—of the burden it may have inflicted upon Anthony?”“That is not the question,” said his brother, shaking his head. “He denies, you must remember, having received any suggestion whatever. Pooh, the thing’s absurd. Besides, young Lee seems to have implied that he was aware of what had taken place.”Sometimes they are odd things which warp our judgments. Robert Mannering was an old lawyer, with a red face and short iron-grey hair, and yet it took a very little thing to turn aside his shrewd every-day sense. Only a woman’s name, and a curl of brown hair out of which the living light had faded.“I have said all I can for him to the Squire,” he went on. “We shall see when he comes back. But—”He walked to the window, and stood with his hands behind him, looking out. There was a threatening of snow in the air, and a few solitary flakes, the more dismal for their want of companionship, came fluttering down upon the empty beds. That “but” sounded like the key-note of all dreary disbelief.“Nobody can tell,” said Mr Mannering, who usually took a more desponding view of human nature than his brother. “My own opinion is that you are all deciding hastily, but with the wind where it is, I don’t believe there’s a man alive could give an unprejudiced judgment. As to these hot-water pipes, Jane contrives to convert them into conductors of cold air, with an ingenuity worthy of a better cause.”“The room is like a hot-house,” said Mr Robert, a little shortly, and still keeping his back turned. “That fool Stokes has not had the sense to mat up the red geranium. He’ll have got rid of every flower in the garden before long, that’s certain. Commend me to this place for incapable idiots.”While he spoke, Mr Mannering with great care and deliberation proceeded to fold a handkerchief, and to tie it round his head, thus imparting an extraordinarily rueful expression to his face.“Yates tells me they’re going to push the Bill for connecting the two lines,” he said, fastening the knot.“So I supposed. Nothing is too fraudulent for me to discredit, and I’m quite aware that you may pick as many pockets as you please, if only you do it on a large enough scale.”“Come, come, Robert. You’ll be had up for a libel.”“I dare say. There’s no bigger libel than truth in these days.”And then he suddenly turned round with a laugh at himself. To do him justice, he was not often so cross, but then he was not often so sore and disappointed at heart. It was very bitter to him to think of Anthony Miles committing a dishonourable action, and it smote him again to remember the injustice to the dead. He could not get one predominant feeling, and that irritated his natural sense of orderliness.Winifred, of whom he thought much at this time, was, perhaps, more impatient than grieved, having an unflinching faith in the triumph of right, which to such natures is as the very air they breathe. Only she had not lived long enough to know that though the triumph comes, it is not always the thing we picture to ourselves, laurel crowns, joyful music, and the people looking on and shouting. There are other triumphs besides this, wounds and tears, and a slow struggle upwards.She believed that every shadow of blame would be swept away from Anthony as soon as he returned from seeing Mr Pitt, and though keenly sensitive to the reproaches she was forced to hear, took a pride in treating them indifferently, as stings too slight even to require defence. When Mr Robert met her one day and would have said something, she was very cool with him.“When Anthony returns,” she said, scarcely stopping, “we shall know exactly how such a mistake can have arisen.”“Anthony is come back,” said Mr Robert, gravely.She could not resist the rush of blood to her heart, which made her ask hastily, “When?”“He came last night. I have just seen him,” Mr Mannering said in the same tone.“Well?”“You will hear from himself, no doubt. Only, my dear, don’t set your heart too strongly upon things being made straight.”Winifred had grown a little pale, but there was not one shade of doubt in her clear eyes as she looked at him.“I do not understand you,” she said quietly. “Things must be made straight, as you call it, in the end; and in the mean time, of course, no one who knows Anthony can doubt him for a moment. That such a report should have ever lived for an hour is the real hardship that we have to regret.”She was so unflinchingly steadfast, that Mr Robert, who believed there was more trouble in store for her, left his warnings alone, and went away mute. After all, she would know soon enough.And to know enough, in this case, simply meant to know nothing. Anthony had come back as he went, with hard lines about his face, and the bitterness deepened and intensified. His first care had been to go to Mr Pitt’s chambers, where he found the old lawyer polite, cold, and unshaken. “I posted the letter myself, Mr Miles. You have ascertained, I presume, that it is not to be heard of in the Dead-Letter Office?” was the text to which he returned when all had been said. He had not seen the contents, but Mr Tregennas had communicated them to him. Anthony grew exceedingly angry, and lost his temper. Although he was aware when he left him that it was absolutely imperative that he should follow Mr Pitt’s suggestions, which were of a very obvious and practical nature, the manner in which they had been thrown out had raised so strong an antagonism in his blood, that he was tempted to fling them and all prudent dealing to the winds, and was, perhaps, not without a feeling of satisfaction, when they proved altogether barren of results.It was a word, however, of Mr Pitt’s about Marmaduke Lee, which gave him something approaching to a clew, at first no more than an idea that his brother-in-law might be able to assist him to grope in the darkness in which he found himself, but gradually, after he went down to Oakham, and had seen Marmaduke, growing by some instinctive power into a perception of what had actually happened. Only those who have some knowledge of the strength and weakness of a character like Anthony’s can conceive what a shattering of landmarks came with this perception. All his impulses were full of indignation and contempt; he almost withered Marmaduke with an outbreak of angry scorn, and yet felt compelled, by the very intensity of this scorn to save so miserable a man from the consequences that would have crushed him. Something in the excessive meanness and cowardice of the act filled him with a loathing shame which made it impossible to proclaim it. Naturally his connection with Marion touched him more nearly with its dishonour, but without such a shield it is probable that he would have shrunk from dragging such a deed from its hiding-place, in order to shelter himself behind it. Yet, although there was a certain generosity in this attitude, there was little mercy in his heart. It enraged him to feel the helplessness of his position, the impotence with which he must submit to the world’s verdict His was a nature to which injustice was the most unbearable form of persecution that could have visited him, one, also, which seemed to raise all his worst qualities in opposition, so as to sweep away with a crash the noble ideal he had set up of men and things; and such a moment in a man’s life is full of danger and trial, his weakness concealing itself so deceptively that it seems to himself to be the armour which enables him to present an undaunted front.In Marions case, it was pity which Anthony felt, and he was as anxious as Marmaduke to spare her the disclosure; but this did not prevent a hard contempt becoming visible in his manner, when she, as was daily the case, openly displayed her enthusiastic admiration for her husband. Naturally, this made her angry, and placed Anthony again in the wrong. It was, as it often is in the world, although, in spite of the repetitions of some thousand years, every experience comes to us with the sense of novelty, the man who was most heavily weighted had the least sympathy, the hardest blame, the sharpest judgments. Other people, less bound to partiality than Marion, compared Anthony’s abruptness, and the strong lines which had grown round his mouth, unfavourably with Marmaduke’s easy-humoured placidity by which he had become a popular neighbour. All the crooks and angles of Anthony’s disposition seemed to be showing themselves, and yet the poor fellow had never so sorely wanted pity, and kindness, and patient treatment. Whether he judged rightly or not, there was something even beyond chivalry in accepting the burden of this hateful thing, to spare another a more terrible weight. There was so much cowardice and feebleness in Marmaduke’s nature that to avoid the pain of disgrace he might, so Anthony believed, have fled from it at any cost,—even life itself; and though he scorned such cowardice, he had not the heart to leave it to its fate.He left Oakham with a bitter consciousness that a gulf was dug between them, and a hot, sore feeling with the world which he was about to face without the power of clearing himself from its accusation. He would make no attempt to save anything out of the wreck; with the pride of youth, he determined that he would not stoop to offer assurances. Knowing how impossible it was that he could have done this deed,—as careless of money as those can be who have never wanted it,—it cut him to the heart that he should be suspected, and he revenged himself by a simulated indifference. Nothing could have been more repellent than his manner of meeting Mr Robert, or less satisfactory than the answers he vouchsafed. He would make no appeal for trust. Little by little, the people who wished to be friendly grew irritated, and the matter was talked of more openly and more unfavourably for Anthony when, instead of conciliating, he seemed to provoke war to the knife. When the Squire passed him with a cool bow, he retaliated by taking no notice whatever of the Squire the next time they met. Even kindness appeared to wound him. Winifred was bewildered when Anthony would lift his hat and go by as if he saw no appeal in her sad eyes. He put himself in opposition to all the world, and as a natural consequence grew hard, bitter, and mistrustful.Perhaps our powers of endurance are never so near giving way as when we are holding them tightly strung, yet conscious of every jar and vibration in the effort; and poor Anthony, with his sensitive and affectionate temperament, went about with a dumb misery in his heart. He was rejecting friendship at the time he most needed it, and really longed to stretch out the hands with which he repelled its sweet kindness, in pitiful entreaty for some touch of fellowship which should break the cold isolation he was creating for himself.

“Anthony Miles is gone to London,” said Mr Robert Mannering, walking into the library of the Red House, on the day following that described in the last chapter.

Mr Mannering looked with a shiver at the door his brother had left open behind him. He had a cold, and a great many theories about its treatment.

“I don’t know what good he can do himself by going up,” added Mr Robert in a perturbed tone.

“He will be able to see Pitt,” suggested Mr Mannering, drawing nearer the fire.

“I wish I could feel there was any chance of his convincing Pitt. It’s a bad business, Charles.”

Mr Mannering looked up with a little surprise; for although his brother frequently indulged in cynical speeches, he had never yet known him to believe in them, or take anything but a largely hopeful view of individualised human nature.

“My dear Robert—would you object to shutting the door?—”

“I beg your pardon,” said Mr Robert hastily, doing as he was requested with an abstracted bang, which made Mr Mannering wince. But he went on.

“Look calmly at the matter. What do we know of the contents of that letter? How is it possible to judge of the terms in which the suggestion was made?—of the burden it may have inflicted upon Anthony?”

“That is not the question,” said his brother, shaking his head. “He denies, you must remember, having received any suggestion whatever. Pooh, the thing’s absurd. Besides, young Lee seems to have implied that he was aware of what had taken place.”

Sometimes they are odd things which warp our judgments. Robert Mannering was an old lawyer, with a red face and short iron-grey hair, and yet it took a very little thing to turn aside his shrewd every-day sense. Only a woman’s name, and a curl of brown hair out of which the living light had faded.

“I have said all I can for him to the Squire,” he went on. “We shall see when he comes back. But—”

He walked to the window, and stood with his hands behind him, looking out. There was a threatening of snow in the air, and a few solitary flakes, the more dismal for their want of companionship, came fluttering down upon the empty beds. That “but” sounded like the key-note of all dreary disbelief.

“Nobody can tell,” said Mr Mannering, who usually took a more desponding view of human nature than his brother. “My own opinion is that you are all deciding hastily, but with the wind where it is, I don’t believe there’s a man alive could give an unprejudiced judgment. As to these hot-water pipes, Jane contrives to convert them into conductors of cold air, with an ingenuity worthy of a better cause.”

“The room is like a hot-house,” said Mr Robert, a little shortly, and still keeping his back turned. “That fool Stokes has not had the sense to mat up the red geranium. He’ll have got rid of every flower in the garden before long, that’s certain. Commend me to this place for incapable idiots.”

While he spoke, Mr Mannering with great care and deliberation proceeded to fold a handkerchief, and to tie it round his head, thus imparting an extraordinarily rueful expression to his face.

“Yates tells me they’re going to push the Bill for connecting the two lines,” he said, fastening the knot.

“So I supposed. Nothing is too fraudulent for me to discredit, and I’m quite aware that you may pick as many pockets as you please, if only you do it on a large enough scale.”

“Come, come, Robert. You’ll be had up for a libel.”

“I dare say. There’s no bigger libel than truth in these days.”

And then he suddenly turned round with a laugh at himself. To do him justice, he was not often so cross, but then he was not often so sore and disappointed at heart. It was very bitter to him to think of Anthony Miles committing a dishonourable action, and it smote him again to remember the injustice to the dead. He could not get one predominant feeling, and that irritated his natural sense of orderliness.

Winifred, of whom he thought much at this time, was, perhaps, more impatient than grieved, having an unflinching faith in the triumph of right, which to such natures is as the very air they breathe. Only she had not lived long enough to know that though the triumph comes, it is not always the thing we picture to ourselves, laurel crowns, joyful music, and the people looking on and shouting. There are other triumphs besides this, wounds and tears, and a slow struggle upwards.

She believed that every shadow of blame would be swept away from Anthony as soon as he returned from seeing Mr Pitt, and though keenly sensitive to the reproaches she was forced to hear, took a pride in treating them indifferently, as stings too slight even to require defence. When Mr Robert met her one day and would have said something, she was very cool with him.

“When Anthony returns,” she said, scarcely stopping, “we shall know exactly how such a mistake can have arisen.”

“Anthony is come back,” said Mr Robert, gravely.

She could not resist the rush of blood to her heart, which made her ask hastily, “When?”

“He came last night. I have just seen him,” Mr Mannering said in the same tone.

“Well?”

“You will hear from himself, no doubt. Only, my dear, don’t set your heart too strongly upon things being made straight.”

Winifred had grown a little pale, but there was not one shade of doubt in her clear eyes as she looked at him.

“I do not understand you,” she said quietly. “Things must be made straight, as you call it, in the end; and in the mean time, of course, no one who knows Anthony can doubt him for a moment. That such a report should have ever lived for an hour is the real hardship that we have to regret.”

She was so unflinchingly steadfast, that Mr Robert, who believed there was more trouble in store for her, left his warnings alone, and went away mute. After all, she would know soon enough.

And to know enough, in this case, simply meant to know nothing. Anthony had come back as he went, with hard lines about his face, and the bitterness deepened and intensified. His first care had been to go to Mr Pitt’s chambers, where he found the old lawyer polite, cold, and unshaken. “I posted the letter myself, Mr Miles. You have ascertained, I presume, that it is not to be heard of in the Dead-Letter Office?” was the text to which he returned when all had been said. He had not seen the contents, but Mr Tregennas had communicated them to him. Anthony grew exceedingly angry, and lost his temper. Although he was aware when he left him that it was absolutely imperative that he should follow Mr Pitt’s suggestions, which were of a very obvious and practical nature, the manner in which they had been thrown out had raised so strong an antagonism in his blood, that he was tempted to fling them and all prudent dealing to the winds, and was, perhaps, not without a feeling of satisfaction, when they proved altogether barren of results.

It was a word, however, of Mr Pitt’s about Marmaduke Lee, which gave him something approaching to a clew, at first no more than an idea that his brother-in-law might be able to assist him to grope in the darkness in which he found himself, but gradually, after he went down to Oakham, and had seen Marmaduke, growing by some instinctive power into a perception of what had actually happened. Only those who have some knowledge of the strength and weakness of a character like Anthony’s can conceive what a shattering of landmarks came with this perception. All his impulses were full of indignation and contempt; he almost withered Marmaduke with an outbreak of angry scorn, and yet felt compelled, by the very intensity of this scorn to save so miserable a man from the consequences that would have crushed him. Something in the excessive meanness and cowardice of the act filled him with a loathing shame which made it impossible to proclaim it. Naturally his connection with Marion touched him more nearly with its dishonour, but without such a shield it is probable that he would have shrunk from dragging such a deed from its hiding-place, in order to shelter himself behind it. Yet, although there was a certain generosity in this attitude, there was little mercy in his heart. It enraged him to feel the helplessness of his position, the impotence with which he must submit to the world’s verdict His was a nature to which injustice was the most unbearable form of persecution that could have visited him, one, also, which seemed to raise all his worst qualities in opposition, so as to sweep away with a crash the noble ideal he had set up of men and things; and such a moment in a man’s life is full of danger and trial, his weakness concealing itself so deceptively that it seems to himself to be the armour which enables him to present an undaunted front.

In Marions case, it was pity which Anthony felt, and he was as anxious as Marmaduke to spare her the disclosure; but this did not prevent a hard contempt becoming visible in his manner, when she, as was daily the case, openly displayed her enthusiastic admiration for her husband. Naturally, this made her angry, and placed Anthony again in the wrong. It was, as it often is in the world, although, in spite of the repetitions of some thousand years, every experience comes to us with the sense of novelty, the man who was most heavily weighted had the least sympathy, the hardest blame, the sharpest judgments. Other people, less bound to partiality than Marion, compared Anthony’s abruptness, and the strong lines which had grown round his mouth, unfavourably with Marmaduke’s easy-humoured placidity by which he had become a popular neighbour. All the crooks and angles of Anthony’s disposition seemed to be showing themselves, and yet the poor fellow had never so sorely wanted pity, and kindness, and patient treatment. Whether he judged rightly or not, there was something even beyond chivalry in accepting the burden of this hateful thing, to spare another a more terrible weight. There was so much cowardice and feebleness in Marmaduke’s nature that to avoid the pain of disgrace he might, so Anthony believed, have fled from it at any cost,—even life itself; and though he scorned such cowardice, he had not the heart to leave it to its fate.

He left Oakham with a bitter consciousness that a gulf was dug between them, and a hot, sore feeling with the world which he was about to face without the power of clearing himself from its accusation. He would make no attempt to save anything out of the wreck; with the pride of youth, he determined that he would not stoop to offer assurances. Knowing how impossible it was that he could have done this deed,—as careless of money as those can be who have never wanted it,—it cut him to the heart that he should be suspected, and he revenged himself by a simulated indifference. Nothing could have been more repellent than his manner of meeting Mr Robert, or less satisfactory than the answers he vouchsafed. He would make no appeal for trust. Little by little, the people who wished to be friendly grew irritated, and the matter was talked of more openly and more unfavourably for Anthony when, instead of conciliating, he seemed to provoke war to the knife. When the Squire passed him with a cool bow, he retaliated by taking no notice whatever of the Squire the next time they met. Even kindness appeared to wound him. Winifred was bewildered when Anthony would lift his hat and go by as if he saw no appeal in her sad eyes. He put himself in opposition to all the world, and as a natural consequence grew hard, bitter, and mistrustful.

Perhaps our powers of endurance are never so near giving way as when we are holding them tightly strung, yet conscious of every jar and vibration in the effort; and poor Anthony, with his sensitive and affectionate temperament, went about with a dumb misery in his heart. He was rejecting friendship at the time he most needed it, and really longed to stretch out the hands with which he repelled its sweet kindness, in pitiful entreaty for some touch of fellowship which should break the cold isolation he was creating for himself.

Chapter Nineteen.“Those have most power to hurt us that we love;We lay our sleeping lives within their arms.”Beaumont and Fletcher.There is a curious likeness in the yesterdays and to-days of our lives, a likeness so strong that it conceals the greater differences from us until we have gone far enough to look back and compare them dispassionately. We eat and drink, talk and sleep, more or less; certain things seem to hold us in chains to which we move obediently. If it were not so, life would be unendurable, the calls upon our sympathy would harden our hearts or wear them out, joy and sorrow would jostle each other too openly in the high road. The mechanism hurts us sometimes, but it is good discipline nevertheless.And so at Thorpe Regis the many changes were gradually covered with the old dress of routine and habit. It is almost sad how soon people become reconciled to them. A year ago it would have seemed the strangest thing in the world for anything to have broken through the daily intercourse between Hardlands and the Vicarage, and here was an alienation so great that it almost amounted to total estrangement. Not that the Squire desired it. Unused to keep a very close control over himself, he allowed his feelings to be seen, and affronted Anthony; but he would gladly have had everything as of old with Mrs Miles, and was too autocratic not to be puzzled when he found this not the case.“It was not her fault. The girls may go to her as much as they please. The poor woman’s to be pitied,—I pity her from the bottom of my heart,” he would say.Mrs Miles on her part had no very clear conception of what had happened, for she had lived in close retirement since her husband’s death, and the few friends who entered that solitude were not likely to be cruelly communicative. But she was aware that unkind reports had been set afloat about the will, and, while really too sad and crushed in spirit to do more than reiterate her assurance that it would not have happened had the Vicar been alive, she was vaguely willing to take up cudgels against all the world on Anthony’s behalf; in comparison with whom what was Hardlands, what was the Squire, what even were motherless Bessie and Winifred?And so, and so, and so,—a hundred little obstacles magnified themselves indefinitely, the two sets of lives that had been so blended with each other fell apart, the little brook widened into a river. Many people thought that it would have been better if Anthony had left the neighbourhood for a time, and allowed the exaggerated reports of his conduct to settle quietly. But perhaps the idea of this sediment of black mud, only requiring a chance stone to be stirred into turbid activity, was more hateful to Anthony than the knowledge that the waters all about him were kept in constant disturbance. He made no pretence of concealing that he was unhappy, or at least no one could fail to see it in his face; and his irritation and soreness against all the world were marked so acutely that it was impossible not to foresee a reaction from so abrupt a closing of his heart. He remained at Thorpe, partly from yielding to his mothers clinging desire to do so, partly from pride which forbade flight from disagreeables, and partly from a failure in those springs of action which had hitherto urged him forward. But he could not long endure the position of solitude he had taken up, and some consciousness of this added to his discomfort.When the thing of which he was accused had first grown into form, Winifred had reproached herself for the warm glow with which her heart assured her that Anthony would never feel her friendship fail him; but this had long ago faded away under the keen chill of his manner, keener because her generous spirit had never wavered in its faithfulness and was enduring all the pangs which he believed himself to be bearing alone. She would not suffer one throb of resentment to answer his coldness, but it cost her a daily and bitter struggle to learn her powerlessness, and to understand that he was himself making it impossible for her to put out so much as a hand to help him in his trouble.She was in the village one day, and just turning out of it towards the Hardlands meadows when she met old Araunah Stokes and his daughter-in-law, Faith’s mother. It was not very often the old man got so far from his house, and he was now walking on with a kind of feeble vigour, as if bent upon making the most of what small strength remained to him. His daughter-in-law—who had evidently been crying, and now and then wiped her eyes—gave Miss Chester to understand that it was Faith who caused their trouble by her persistence in her engagement.“Whatever us shall do, I don’t know, wi’ her so contrairy.”“Hold your tongue,” said the old man, turning upon her with a weak, fierce voice. “The women tells and tells, till they talks the very brains out o’ yer head. You’m no better than a baby when they’ve clacketed at ye for an hour or two without a word of sense from beginnin’ to end.”“An’ me niver so much as openin’ my lips,” said Mrs Stokes, crying meekly and holding up her hands. “An’ I did think as Faith would ha’ bin a comfort, me so weak, wi’ no sproyle, nor nothin’, and gran’father only just fit to totle about.”“It ain’t much comfort you’m like to get out o’ maedens,” said Araunah, still bitterly. “They’m so hard to manage as a drove o’ pegs. Faith shall bide where her be, though, for all her mother’s setting up.”“Has she made up her mind, then, to marry this man?” asked Winifred, interested.“He doan’t give her the chance,” said the grandfather angrily, striking his stick upon the ground. “Girl’s a fule, that’s t’ long an’ short o’t, an’ he bain’t so beg a wan.”“He knows better nor to persume,” said Mrs Stokes, indignant for Faith’s sake. “You see, Miss Winifred, he doan’t feel he’ve got enough to offer our maed,—I doan’t know what her can be thinkin’ of,” continued her mother, dissolving suddenly again.“An’ her’d give up a good pleace. But her shall bide, her shall bide.”“Though it mayn’t be for long, with Mr Anthony goin’ to be married hisself.”Self-possession is a wonderful power. We read with a thrill of amazement of the Spartan boy, and the fox, and the hidden agony, but, after all, the heroism is repeated day by day around us. There are people getting stabs from unconscious executioners, and the life dying out of them, while they are smiling and keeping up the little ball of conversation, and betraying nothing of the pang. Winifred’s voice became a little gayer than usual as she said,—“Mr Anthony? Is he going to be married?”“To Miss Lovell down to Under’m, haven’t you heard it, miss? It’s that has set Faith thinkin’ more o’ that Stephens.”“I woan’t have it,” said the old man, querulously. “I woan’t have she comin’ hoam to we, ating and drinking. Polly has more sense than Faith and her mother putt together.”Winifred never quite knew what she said, but she walked away with her heart suddenly hardened against Faith. Why should Faith escape?—why should she not bear her lot like other people?—why should one be set free more than another? And, O, what had Faith to endure! What grief was hers, whose lover only did not think himself worthy, or who would, perhaps, renounce his happiness for the sake of perishing souls? Grief?—why, it was an exquisite bliss. Faith stood on one side, triumphant and happy, while Winifred walked in the valley of humiliation, with sharpest thorns piercing her feet. Anthony did not love her, for he loved another. Death builds no wall of separation like this, nay, death, will break down walls,—only love itself can bar love with a hopeless fence. She fought against the bitter truth, poor soul, calling herself by hard names, and laughing drearily at her own folly; but the anguish was very acute, and she had a feeling as if, though for a little while she might keep its sharpest suffering at aim’s length, it would overmaster her at last. Was it all true,—real? Was the sun shining on her, or was it rather a cruel furnace that had suddenly scorched the earth, and would burn and scorch day after day, day after day, through long years, through an endless lifetime, grey with shadows and weary with pain, and with no better hope than forgetfulness? Heaven pity those whose sorrow brings them face to face with such a thought and no further! Its very touch gave Winifred a shuddering fear of herself, and a momentary but clear perception of something that should shine through grief and overcome it, ah, even make the rugged road beautiful.But it was difficult for her to disconnect her thoughts as yet while they were vibrating and ringing with the blow. She walked mechanically towards home, but she saw Bessie and Mr and Mrs Featherly in the garden, and feeling it impossible at this moment to join them, she stood still irresolutely, and then turned and went along the field, where a little stream was running, and a path led up through a small wood.The day was delicately bright and hot. Across a pale moon that looked herself no more than a stationary cloud, little wilful vapours which had broken away from larger masses were sailing. Red cattle, satisfied with their rich flowery pastures, had gathered under the hedges to chew the cud and sleepily whisk away the flies. The brown water hurried along, washing long grass, and shining up at meadow-sweet and purple clusters of loosestrife. There were cool flashing lights, and tender depths of colour, and a sweet content over everything, and poor Winifred growing sadder and sadder with the sense of contrast, yet walking more slowly and looking wistfully at the long grass, with a vague longing to lie down in it, and let everything go by and away forever. It might have been this which, as she went towards a little wooden bridge crossing the stream into the wood, deafened her ears to a step until Anthony Miles himself was close to her. The instant before she had believed herself safe with the patient cattle and the water and her own sad thoughts, and it cost her a struggle to master the tumult into which her feelings were suddenly stirred. But Anthony was too much absorbed in his own thoughts to notice any disturbance, and as matters had not yet come to such a pass that they could meet in a lonely meadow and go by without greeting, he put out his hand, and said,—“Are you going into the wood? You will find it very hot even there. A thunder-storm would be a real comfort.”“O, I like this sort of day!” said Winifred, with a hurrying desire to prove her own perfect contentment. “Everything is looking most beautiful I see Sniff is as fond as ever of the water—” She hesitated suddenly, there being a certain awkwardness quick to make itself felt in any allusion to the past, however slight; but Anthony said carelessly,—“Sniff was due at Oakham, but as my mother seems to want him more than Marion, I shall not send him.”“Is Marion quite well?”“Quite well, thank you.”It was all so commonplace, and the moment had given her so much strength, that Winifred made a desperate resolution.“I have just been told something,” she said, looking straight in his face and smiling. “I hear that you are going to marry Miss Lovell. Please let me congratulate you, unless it is too soon.”There was a flush on her cheek, and her words ended with an odd ring of hardness, but no one would have been likely to read these little signs. Anthony looked at her more kindly than he had yet done, and said “Thank you” gravely.That was all. A few words, the river running through the waving grass, a woodpecker scraping the tree, flies darting here and there, Sniff dashing after a trout, Anthony, who once had been so near them all, standing by her, and answering from the other side of a great gulf. That was all. It did not seem as if Winifred could say any more except the good-by of which the air was full, and which all the little leaves in the wood rustled as she passed under them.Anthony stood still for a moment and watched her going away. He had a very tender heart, poor fellow, though it was obstinate and proud in many things, and too angry now to be just. A remembrance of old times was sure to soften him, when once he realised that they were old and past; and he began to think that, after all, Winifred was not, perhaps, an enemy. He watched her, and then called Sniff out of the bright brown water and walked away.As for Winifred—well, it was on her knees that she fought her battle, into which neither you nor I need look.Almost to all people, I suppose, there comes a time in their lives when life, not death, is the phantom they dread. One fear may be as unworthy as the other, but it is there. Only for both there is a merciful Hand stretched out, and if into that Hand we put our own it will lead us gently until we are brought face to face with our fear, and see that the dread phantom has, indeed, as it were, the face of an angel.

“Those have most power to hurt us that we love;We lay our sleeping lives within their arms.”Beaumont and Fletcher.

“Those have most power to hurt us that we love;We lay our sleeping lives within their arms.”Beaumont and Fletcher.

There is a curious likeness in the yesterdays and to-days of our lives, a likeness so strong that it conceals the greater differences from us until we have gone far enough to look back and compare them dispassionately. We eat and drink, talk and sleep, more or less; certain things seem to hold us in chains to which we move obediently. If it were not so, life would be unendurable, the calls upon our sympathy would harden our hearts or wear them out, joy and sorrow would jostle each other too openly in the high road. The mechanism hurts us sometimes, but it is good discipline nevertheless.

And so at Thorpe Regis the many changes were gradually covered with the old dress of routine and habit. It is almost sad how soon people become reconciled to them. A year ago it would have seemed the strangest thing in the world for anything to have broken through the daily intercourse between Hardlands and the Vicarage, and here was an alienation so great that it almost amounted to total estrangement. Not that the Squire desired it. Unused to keep a very close control over himself, he allowed his feelings to be seen, and affronted Anthony; but he would gladly have had everything as of old with Mrs Miles, and was too autocratic not to be puzzled when he found this not the case.

“It was not her fault. The girls may go to her as much as they please. The poor woman’s to be pitied,—I pity her from the bottom of my heart,” he would say.

Mrs Miles on her part had no very clear conception of what had happened, for she had lived in close retirement since her husband’s death, and the few friends who entered that solitude were not likely to be cruelly communicative. But she was aware that unkind reports had been set afloat about the will, and, while really too sad and crushed in spirit to do more than reiterate her assurance that it would not have happened had the Vicar been alive, she was vaguely willing to take up cudgels against all the world on Anthony’s behalf; in comparison with whom what was Hardlands, what was the Squire, what even were motherless Bessie and Winifred?

And so, and so, and so,—a hundred little obstacles magnified themselves indefinitely, the two sets of lives that had been so blended with each other fell apart, the little brook widened into a river. Many people thought that it would have been better if Anthony had left the neighbourhood for a time, and allowed the exaggerated reports of his conduct to settle quietly. But perhaps the idea of this sediment of black mud, only requiring a chance stone to be stirred into turbid activity, was more hateful to Anthony than the knowledge that the waters all about him were kept in constant disturbance. He made no pretence of concealing that he was unhappy, or at least no one could fail to see it in his face; and his irritation and soreness against all the world were marked so acutely that it was impossible not to foresee a reaction from so abrupt a closing of his heart. He remained at Thorpe, partly from yielding to his mothers clinging desire to do so, partly from pride which forbade flight from disagreeables, and partly from a failure in those springs of action which had hitherto urged him forward. But he could not long endure the position of solitude he had taken up, and some consciousness of this added to his discomfort.

When the thing of which he was accused had first grown into form, Winifred had reproached herself for the warm glow with which her heart assured her that Anthony would never feel her friendship fail him; but this had long ago faded away under the keen chill of his manner, keener because her generous spirit had never wavered in its faithfulness and was enduring all the pangs which he believed himself to be bearing alone. She would not suffer one throb of resentment to answer his coldness, but it cost her a daily and bitter struggle to learn her powerlessness, and to understand that he was himself making it impossible for her to put out so much as a hand to help him in his trouble.

She was in the village one day, and just turning out of it towards the Hardlands meadows when she met old Araunah Stokes and his daughter-in-law, Faith’s mother. It was not very often the old man got so far from his house, and he was now walking on with a kind of feeble vigour, as if bent upon making the most of what small strength remained to him. His daughter-in-law—who had evidently been crying, and now and then wiped her eyes—gave Miss Chester to understand that it was Faith who caused their trouble by her persistence in her engagement.

“Whatever us shall do, I don’t know, wi’ her so contrairy.”

“Hold your tongue,” said the old man, turning upon her with a weak, fierce voice. “The women tells and tells, till they talks the very brains out o’ yer head. You’m no better than a baby when they’ve clacketed at ye for an hour or two without a word of sense from beginnin’ to end.”

“An’ me niver so much as openin’ my lips,” said Mrs Stokes, crying meekly and holding up her hands. “An’ I did think as Faith would ha’ bin a comfort, me so weak, wi’ no sproyle, nor nothin’, and gran’father only just fit to totle about.”

“It ain’t much comfort you’m like to get out o’ maedens,” said Araunah, still bitterly. “They’m so hard to manage as a drove o’ pegs. Faith shall bide where her be, though, for all her mother’s setting up.”

“Has she made up her mind, then, to marry this man?” asked Winifred, interested.

“He doan’t give her the chance,” said the grandfather angrily, striking his stick upon the ground. “Girl’s a fule, that’s t’ long an’ short o’t, an’ he bain’t so beg a wan.”

“He knows better nor to persume,” said Mrs Stokes, indignant for Faith’s sake. “You see, Miss Winifred, he doan’t feel he’ve got enough to offer our maed,—I doan’t know what her can be thinkin’ of,” continued her mother, dissolving suddenly again.

“An’ her’d give up a good pleace. But her shall bide, her shall bide.”

“Though it mayn’t be for long, with Mr Anthony goin’ to be married hisself.”

Self-possession is a wonderful power. We read with a thrill of amazement of the Spartan boy, and the fox, and the hidden agony, but, after all, the heroism is repeated day by day around us. There are people getting stabs from unconscious executioners, and the life dying out of them, while they are smiling and keeping up the little ball of conversation, and betraying nothing of the pang. Winifred’s voice became a little gayer than usual as she said,—

“Mr Anthony? Is he going to be married?”

“To Miss Lovell down to Under’m, haven’t you heard it, miss? It’s that has set Faith thinkin’ more o’ that Stephens.”

“I woan’t have it,” said the old man, querulously. “I woan’t have she comin’ hoam to we, ating and drinking. Polly has more sense than Faith and her mother putt together.”

Winifred never quite knew what she said, but she walked away with her heart suddenly hardened against Faith. Why should Faith escape?—why should she not bear her lot like other people?—why should one be set free more than another? And, O, what had Faith to endure! What grief was hers, whose lover only did not think himself worthy, or who would, perhaps, renounce his happiness for the sake of perishing souls? Grief?—why, it was an exquisite bliss. Faith stood on one side, triumphant and happy, while Winifred walked in the valley of humiliation, with sharpest thorns piercing her feet. Anthony did not love her, for he loved another. Death builds no wall of separation like this, nay, death, will break down walls,—only love itself can bar love with a hopeless fence. She fought against the bitter truth, poor soul, calling herself by hard names, and laughing drearily at her own folly; but the anguish was very acute, and she had a feeling as if, though for a little while she might keep its sharpest suffering at aim’s length, it would overmaster her at last. Was it all true,—real? Was the sun shining on her, or was it rather a cruel furnace that had suddenly scorched the earth, and would burn and scorch day after day, day after day, through long years, through an endless lifetime, grey with shadows and weary with pain, and with no better hope than forgetfulness? Heaven pity those whose sorrow brings them face to face with such a thought and no further! Its very touch gave Winifred a shuddering fear of herself, and a momentary but clear perception of something that should shine through grief and overcome it, ah, even make the rugged road beautiful.

But it was difficult for her to disconnect her thoughts as yet while they were vibrating and ringing with the blow. She walked mechanically towards home, but she saw Bessie and Mr and Mrs Featherly in the garden, and feeling it impossible at this moment to join them, she stood still irresolutely, and then turned and went along the field, where a little stream was running, and a path led up through a small wood.

The day was delicately bright and hot. Across a pale moon that looked herself no more than a stationary cloud, little wilful vapours which had broken away from larger masses were sailing. Red cattle, satisfied with their rich flowery pastures, had gathered under the hedges to chew the cud and sleepily whisk away the flies. The brown water hurried along, washing long grass, and shining up at meadow-sweet and purple clusters of loosestrife. There were cool flashing lights, and tender depths of colour, and a sweet content over everything, and poor Winifred growing sadder and sadder with the sense of contrast, yet walking more slowly and looking wistfully at the long grass, with a vague longing to lie down in it, and let everything go by and away forever. It might have been this which, as she went towards a little wooden bridge crossing the stream into the wood, deafened her ears to a step until Anthony Miles himself was close to her. The instant before she had believed herself safe with the patient cattle and the water and her own sad thoughts, and it cost her a struggle to master the tumult into which her feelings were suddenly stirred. But Anthony was too much absorbed in his own thoughts to notice any disturbance, and as matters had not yet come to such a pass that they could meet in a lonely meadow and go by without greeting, he put out his hand, and said,—

“Are you going into the wood? You will find it very hot even there. A thunder-storm would be a real comfort.”

“O, I like this sort of day!” said Winifred, with a hurrying desire to prove her own perfect contentment. “Everything is looking most beautiful I see Sniff is as fond as ever of the water—” She hesitated suddenly, there being a certain awkwardness quick to make itself felt in any allusion to the past, however slight; but Anthony said carelessly,—

“Sniff was due at Oakham, but as my mother seems to want him more than Marion, I shall not send him.”

“Is Marion quite well?”

“Quite well, thank you.”

It was all so commonplace, and the moment had given her so much strength, that Winifred made a desperate resolution.

“I have just been told something,” she said, looking straight in his face and smiling. “I hear that you are going to marry Miss Lovell. Please let me congratulate you, unless it is too soon.”

There was a flush on her cheek, and her words ended with an odd ring of hardness, but no one would have been likely to read these little signs. Anthony looked at her more kindly than he had yet done, and said “Thank you” gravely.

That was all. A few words, the river running through the waving grass, a woodpecker scraping the tree, flies darting here and there, Sniff dashing after a trout, Anthony, who once had been so near them all, standing by her, and answering from the other side of a great gulf. That was all. It did not seem as if Winifred could say any more except the good-by of which the air was full, and which all the little leaves in the wood rustled as she passed under them.

Anthony stood still for a moment and watched her going away. He had a very tender heart, poor fellow, though it was obstinate and proud in many things, and too angry now to be just. A remembrance of old times was sure to soften him, when once he realised that they were old and past; and he began to think that, after all, Winifred was not, perhaps, an enemy. He watched her, and then called Sniff out of the bright brown water and walked away.

As for Winifred—well, it was on her knees that she fought her battle, into which neither you nor I need look.

Almost to all people, I suppose, there comes a time in their lives when life, not death, is the phantom they dread. One fear may be as unworthy as the other, but it is there. Only for both there is a merciful Hand stretched out, and if into that Hand we put our own it will lead us gently until we are brought face to face with our fear, and see that the dread phantom has, indeed, as it were, the face of an angel.

Chapter Twenty.“They who see more of our nature than the surface know that our interests are quite as frequently governed by our character as our character is by our interests.”Sir H. Lytton Bulwer.Anthony walked towards Thorpe. He was going back to the cottage, and then intended to drive into Underham, and dine with the Bennetts. They evidently expected that he should spend part of each day at their house, and the arrangement was one which he did not dislike, and to which he therefore consented tacitly.But it must be confessed that although when he thought of Ada Lovell, and the position in which he stood towards her, the remembrance was winged with a certain satisfaction, she did not occupy any large portion of his reflections. He was not thinking very much of anybody except himself, and the injustice of the world. What had he, of all men, done to be visited as he was? He was so sensitive, so conscious of his own uprightness, that the cold blight of suspicion withered him with its very first breath; and he had put on a bold front, and, as it were, exhausted his courage with an outward show of defiance, while to his inward spirit it seemed that all life and energy had died utterly away. The very foundations were shaken. For if people ceased to believe in him, with the reaction of a sanguine mind there was nothing left in which he could continue to believe. He had made himself the centre of his own theories, working them out from himself, confident in his own powers, and suddenly all had come to an end, such an end as seemed to him the end of all things, faith, hope, and charity with the rest. To his ardent nature there was no balm in conscious innocence; it mattered nothing that he knew the falseness of their suspicions, while the monstrous feet of suspicion itself remained.Deep down in his heart, moreover, there was a touch of that insistance upon martyrdom which is more universal than we perhaps think. He thrust away compassion, feeling as if an earthquake had separated him from his former life, and as if no one were left to stand on the same side with him. This was an exaggeration of his position, for, although the world is more ready for condemnation than acquittal, there is a party for every side, and Anthony might have seen hands stretched out if he would. But there was not a word or look to which he did not give a warp in the wrong direction. He had persistently classed Winifred with the rest of the world, and it is possible that the very consciousness that to do so cost him a pang made the martyrdom the dearer; but her reticence had told against her cruelly, for she believed in him too fully to have thought of expressing her belief, little dreaming that a more open sympathy would have better suited his mood than her intense but hidden feeling. He nursed the soreness in the same way that he nursed all things which were painful at this time, until it really seemed as if Mr Bennett’s rather coarse expressions of friendliness, and Ada’s assurance that she had no patience with people who talked as the Thorpe people talked, had a value which he could not find elsewhere. And then she was pretty and good-natured, trying to please him just as ardently as in the days before the cloud,—which, indeed, she thought a matter of very small consequence,—and he felt a certain gratitude towards her. There may have been something of defiance, and a disposition to run counter to opinion, for whatever was his motive in turning suddenly one day upon Ada, who was fluttering and saying foolish amiable things, it was certainly not purely that of love; but perhaps we are all sufficiently liable to act from mixed motives, to abstain from judging him too harshly.His engagement, although Winifred heard of it for the first time that day, had really lasted a week: some question of the time struck him as he drove to the door of the Bennetts’ house, and went slowly up the steps. There had been a little confusion of blue at one side of the windows, of which he had caught sight, and guessed who was waiting for him. In the short space between the door and the staircase there rose up before him her welcome, her look, the very words she would say, as if it had all been going on for a year instead of the few days which had surely offered no time for weariness. And yet a certain weariness touched him with a sting of self-reproach, and made him infuse a little more warmth into his greeting than was usual.“You are very late, Anthony,” she said, putting her hand on his arm, and shaking her long curl reprovingly. “Do you know that Aunt Henrietta fancied you were not coming at all?”“But you did not accuse me of anything so impossible?”“No, indeed. I don’t think I should have spoken to you for a week if you had stayed away, and I suppose, though I am sure I don’t know, that you would have minded that. But now that you are here, you are to tell me every single thing you have been doing.”His face darkened slightly. This small affectionate tyranny was new to him, and he was not quite in the mood for it.“Suppose we turn the tables,” he said, with a little restraint. “What have you been about to-day?”“I? O, I have not been beyond the garden. I sat there and read and thought—”“Thought?”“Ah, I am not going to tell you what I was thinking of; you men are conceited enough already. O Anthony, I hear Uncle Tom. Do go and look out of that window; do, please, go!”There seemed no particular reason for this separation, but she was so eager that Anthony obeyed. He rather dreaded Mr Bennett’s ponderous jokes himself, and it was possible that Ada had not yet become used to them.“Ah, Miles, here you are, here you are! just in time for the salmon, after all. My wife took it into her head you’d be late, but I said, ‘My dear, put a salmon at one end of the line, and a man at the other, and the two must come together somehow.’ Ha, ha! not bad, was it? And you’d something else to draw you besides, hadn’t you? Ada,—where are you, Ada? Come, come, you’d have me believe you’ve never met before; perhaps you’d like to be introduced. It’s never too late to mend, is it?”“O Uncle Tom!” said Ada, smiling, and trying to blush. She looked very pretty in spite of the failure, and Anthony’s face relaxed from the lines which were becoming habitual. She was pretty and affectionate, adornments on which a man sets a high value, often taking a little silliness as a natural and not much to be minded accompaniment. The room was cheerful, not furnished altogether in the best taste, but laden with a certain air of ripe and drowsy comfort which went far to atone for a few sins of colour. It was not so easy to get over Mr Bennett’s prosy facetiousness, but his business kept him generally out of the way, and both he and his wife possessed a fund of that kind-heartedness which never fails to create a friendly atmosphere. If they were apt to err on the side of plenty, there was no doubt that they gave good dinners, dinners which Anthony, who was fastidious, liked, although not to the extent to which Mr Bennett credited him. Thus there were, on the whole, reasons which made the house pleasant to him, and with the morbid fret that had grown into his life—or out of his life, if you will—worrying him incessantly, it gave him a feeling of ease to find himself in the midst of a softly moving existence, where all sharp corners were rounded off, all hardness padded, and where he was made much of and gently flattered. Mrs Bennett had always sleepily thought—if thinking is not too strong an expression for the occasion—that it would be a good match for Ada, who had lived with them ever since she had been left an orphan, two years ago; and as for the absurd stories which had been spread about, it was far more agreeable to her good-natured stolidity to have no opinions on the matter. It was very likely a mistake from beginning to end, or, if not a mistake, no doubt Mr Miles had good reasons for all he had done. Her comfortable kindness, so unequivocally free from hidden doubts, was really soothing to poor Anthony, and paved the way for the step which Ada’s prettiness and enthusiasm and desperate admiration brought about at last. No one could have suspected indolent Mrs Bennett of match-making, but she liked to see people happy, and had not a tinge of malice or uncharitableness in her disposition.“It is so hot,” she said, coming into the room with her soft heavy step, and sinking into an easy-chair. “One of those things they have in India—punkahs, don’t they call them?—would be very nice. Does your mother feel the heat, Mr Miles? I really think it is quite a labour to have to go down to dinner.”“My dear, I can assure you it never answers to neglect the inner man,” said Mr Bennett, laughing weightily at his own jokes, on his way to the dining-room. “Come, Ada, it’s all very well to live upon air, but when you are as old as your aunt and I, you’ll find it’ll not pay. Not it, indeed. No, no; keep up the system, that has always been my maxim. By the way, Miles, I haven’t seen Mannering or his brother for the last ten days. Nothing wrong, I hope?”“I don’t speak from personal knowledge,” said Anthony, with the shade again on his face, “but some one in the village said that Mr Mannering was laid up with an attack of rheumatism.”“Poor fellow, poor fellow, he has wretched health, and no wonder. Any one must suffer in the end who lives upon mutton six days out of the seven. Tell him, when you see him, that he must come and dine with us as soon as he can, and try a little variety. Or you might drive out there one afternoon, my dear, and see what really is the matter. I’ve the greatest regard for Mannering.”“Yes, indeed,” assented Mrs Bennett in the slow round voice that seemed hardly able to utter a contradiction.“And I will go with you, Aunt Henrietta,” said Ada, cheerfully. “I want to see that darling Mr Robert, and to get him to show me his flowers. It will be very nice, and you will meet us there, Anthony, won’t you?”“Mr Robert is a better showman when he is not interfered with,” said Anthony, with a sharp pang of remembrance. “I’ll meet you afterwards, and hear what you have seen.”“Well, I think Adas plan is not a bad one,” persisted Mr Bennett, “and, dear me, you must be as free of that house as if it were your own! Say to-morrow.”“To-morrow I am engaged.”“Well then, Wednesday.”“It will not be possible for me to go to the Red House,” said Anthony in an odd, unyielding tone.Mr Bennett gave a long “Whew!”Ada said with a pout, “O, but you must!” and Mrs Bennett came to the rescue with the unconsciousness which constituted a real charm in Anthony’s eyes.“It will be too hot for us to drive there just yet. Ada and I must go some day when I am a little less overdone and the weather is cooler.”Mr Bennett was sufficiently shrewd to be alive both to the jar and to a perception that the subject was one which had better be allowed to drop.“It is hot, as you say, my dear, and perhaps it would be as well to wait until Mannering is about again. Try a little of that Sauterne, Miles; capital stuff for this weather. Well, Ada, what have you been doing with yourself? Warren told me he had seen you at the station.”It was Ada’s turn to look discomposed.“The station? O yes, I remember. I walked across to see whether the Mannerses came by the four-o’clock train. I forgot that I had been out of the garden when you asked me,” she said, with an elaboration of openness which was unnecessary, as Anthony had no suspicions to be allayed.“O, he’s been asking you, has he?” said Mr Bennett jocosely. “It’s lucky you can explain yourself, or poor Warren would have put his foot in it.”“Mr Warren!” said Ada with scorn.“Come, come, what has the poor man done? Upon my word, I should have thought young ladies would consider him a good-looking, agreeable young fellow. I am sure you did when you first knew him, Ada, eh?”“I don’t know what I thought once,” said Ada, looking down, and smiling prettily again; “all I know is that I don’t admire him now.”If Anthony wanted mollifying,—which was perhaps not the case, although this family party had not seemed to go quite as smoothly as those which had preceded it,—this little speech effected its purpose. He liked the covert homage, and, congratulating himself upon the good-humour which Mr Bennett’s rather trying allusions could not ruffle, roused himself into the old brightness which only now came in occasional flashes. Ada was enchanted, shook back her long curl, and put out all her attractions; and Anthony, walking home through the quiet lanes sweet with the dewy freshness of a summer night, dreamed his new dream with a better success. Only, alas, even in dreams there are jangled notes, struggles, interruptions. People’s faces come and go, and look sadly at us, changing often, just as the joy of their presence makes itself felt. Every now and then out of Ada’s face other eyes looked at him; eyes that were grave and true and tender, and full of a trust that had never failed, although he had read it wrongly.

“They who see more of our nature than the surface know that our interests are quite as frequently governed by our character as our character is by our interests.”Sir H. Lytton Bulwer.

“They who see more of our nature than the surface know that our interests are quite as frequently governed by our character as our character is by our interests.”Sir H. Lytton Bulwer.

Anthony walked towards Thorpe. He was going back to the cottage, and then intended to drive into Underham, and dine with the Bennetts. They evidently expected that he should spend part of each day at their house, and the arrangement was one which he did not dislike, and to which he therefore consented tacitly.

But it must be confessed that although when he thought of Ada Lovell, and the position in which he stood towards her, the remembrance was winged with a certain satisfaction, she did not occupy any large portion of his reflections. He was not thinking very much of anybody except himself, and the injustice of the world. What had he, of all men, done to be visited as he was? He was so sensitive, so conscious of his own uprightness, that the cold blight of suspicion withered him with its very first breath; and he had put on a bold front, and, as it were, exhausted his courage with an outward show of defiance, while to his inward spirit it seemed that all life and energy had died utterly away. The very foundations were shaken. For if people ceased to believe in him, with the reaction of a sanguine mind there was nothing left in which he could continue to believe. He had made himself the centre of his own theories, working them out from himself, confident in his own powers, and suddenly all had come to an end, such an end as seemed to him the end of all things, faith, hope, and charity with the rest. To his ardent nature there was no balm in conscious innocence; it mattered nothing that he knew the falseness of their suspicions, while the monstrous feet of suspicion itself remained.

Deep down in his heart, moreover, there was a touch of that insistance upon martyrdom which is more universal than we perhaps think. He thrust away compassion, feeling as if an earthquake had separated him from his former life, and as if no one were left to stand on the same side with him. This was an exaggeration of his position, for, although the world is more ready for condemnation than acquittal, there is a party for every side, and Anthony might have seen hands stretched out if he would. But there was not a word or look to which he did not give a warp in the wrong direction. He had persistently classed Winifred with the rest of the world, and it is possible that the very consciousness that to do so cost him a pang made the martyrdom the dearer; but her reticence had told against her cruelly, for she believed in him too fully to have thought of expressing her belief, little dreaming that a more open sympathy would have better suited his mood than her intense but hidden feeling. He nursed the soreness in the same way that he nursed all things which were painful at this time, until it really seemed as if Mr Bennett’s rather coarse expressions of friendliness, and Ada’s assurance that she had no patience with people who talked as the Thorpe people talked, had a value which he could not find elsewhere. And then she was pretty and good-natured, trying to please him just as ardently as in the days before the cloud,—which, indeed, she thought a matter of very small consequence,—and he felt a certain gratitude towards her. There may have been something of defiance, and a disposition to run counter to opinion, for whatever was his motive in turning suddenly one day upon Ada, who was fluttering and saying foolish amiable things, it was certainly not purely that of love; but perhaps we are all sufficiently liable to act from mixed motives, to abstain from judging him too harshly.

His engagement, although Winifred heard of it for the first time that day, had really lasted a week: some question of the time struck him as he drove to the door of the Bennetts’ house, and went slowly up the steps. There had been a little confusion of blue at one side of the windows, of which he had caught sight, and guessed who was waiting for him. In the short space between the door and the staircase there rose up before him her welcome, her look, the very words she would say, as if it had all been going on for a year instead of the few days which had surely offered no time for weariness. And yet a certain weariness touched him with a sting of self-reproach, and made him infuse a little more warmth into his greeting than was usual.

“You are very late, Anthony,” she said, putting her hand on his arm, and shaking her long curl reprovingly. “Do you know that Aunt Henrietta fancied you were not coming at all?”

“But you did not accuse me of anything so impossible?”

“No, indeed. I don’t think I should have spoken to you for a week if you had stayed away, and I suppose, though I am sure I don’t know, that you would have minded that. But now that you are here, you are to tell me every single thing you have been doing.”

His face darkened slightly. This small affectionate tyranny was new to him, and he was not quite in the mood for it.

“Suppose we turn the tables,” he said, with a little restraint. “What have you been about to-day?”

“I? O, I have not been beyond the garden. I sat there and read and thought—”

“Thought?”

“Ah, I am not going to tell you what I was thinking of; you men are conceited enough already. O Anthony, I hear Uncle Tom. Do go and look out of that window; do, please, go!”

There seemed no particular reason for this separation, but she was so eager that Anthony obeyed. He rather dreaded Mr Bennett’s ponderous jokes himself, and it was possible that Ada had not yet become used to them.

“Ah, Miles, here you are, here you are! just in time for the salmon, after all. My wife took it into her head you’d be late, but I said, ‘My dear, put a salmon at one end of the line, and a man at the other, and the two must come together somehow.’ Ha, ha! not bad, was it? And you’d something else to draw you besides, hadn’t you? Ada,—where are you, Ada? Come, come, you’d have me believe you’ve never met before; perhaps you’d like to be introduced. It’s never too late to mend, is it?”

“O Uncle Tom!” said Ada, smiling, and trying to blush. She looked very pretty in spite of the failure, and Anthony’s face relaxed from the lines which were becoming habitual. She was pretty and affectionate, adornments on which a man sets a high value, often taking a little silliness as a natural and not much to be minded accompaniment. The room was cheerful, not furnished altogether in the best taste, but laden with a certain air of ripe and drowsy comfort which went far to atone for a few sins of colour. It was not so easy to get over Mr Bennett’s prosy facetiousness, but his business kept him generally out of the way, and both he and his wife possessed a fund of that kind-heartedness which never fails to create a friendly atmosphere. If they were apt to err on the side of plenty, there was no doubt that they gave good dinners, dinners which Anthony, who was fastidious, liked, although not to the extent to which Mr Bennett credited him. Thus there were, on the whole, reasons which made the house pleasant to him, and with the morbid fret that had grown into his life—or out of his life, if you will—worrying him incessantly, it gave him a feeling of ease to find himself in the midst of a softly moving existence, where all sharp corners were rounded off, all hardness padded, and where he was made much of and gently flattered. Mrs Bennett had always sleepily thought—if thinking is not too strong an expression for the occasion—that it would be a good match for Ada, who had lived with them ever since she had been left an orphan, two years ago; and as for the absurd stories which had been spread about, it was far more agreeable to her good-natured stolidity to have no opinions on the matter. It was very likely a mistake from beginning to end, or, if not a mistake, no doubt Mr Miles had good reasons for all he had done. Her comfortable kindness, so unequivocally free from hidden doubts, was really soothing to poor Anthony, and paved the way for the step which Ada’s prettiness and enthusiasm and desperate admiration brought about at last. No one could have suspected indolent Mrs Bennett of match-making, but she liked to see people happy, and had not a tinge of malice or uncharitableness in her disposition.

“It is so hot,” she said, coming into the room with her soft heavy step, and sinking into an easy-chair. “One of those things they have in India—punkahs, don’t they call them?—would be very nice. Does your mother feel the heat, Mr Miles? I really think it is quite a labour to have to go down to dinner.”

“My dear, I can assure you it never answers to neglect the inner man,” said Mr Bennett, laughing weightily at his own jokes, on his way to the dining-room. “Come, Ada, it’s all very well to live upon air, but when you are as old as your aunt and I, you’ll find it’ll not pay. Not it, indeed. No, no; keep up the system, that has always been my maxim. By the way, Miles, I haven’t seen Mannering or his brother for the last ten days. Nothing wrong, I hope?”

“I don’t speak from personal knowledge,” said Anthony, with the shade again on his face, “but some one in the village said that Mr Mannering was laid up with an attack of rheumatism.”

“Poor fellow, poor fellow, he has wretched health, and no wonder. Any one must suffer in the end who lives upon mutton six days out of the seven. Tell him, when you see him, that he must come and dine with us as soon as he can, and try a little variety. Or you might drive out there one afternoon, my dear, and see what really is the matter. I’ve the greatest regard for Mannering.”

“Yes, indeed,” assented Mrs Bennett in the slow round voice that seemed hardly able to utter a contradiction.

“And I will go with you, Aunt Henrietta,” said Ada, cheerfully. “I want to see that darling Mr Robert, and to get him to show me his flowers. It will be very nice, and you will meet us there, Anthony, won’t you?”

“Mr Robert is a better showman when he is not interfered with,” said Anthony, with a sharp pang of remembrance. “I’ll meet you afterwards, and hear what you have seen.”

“Well, I think Adas plan is not a bad one,” persisted Mr Bennett, “and, dear me, you must be as free of that house as if it were your own! Say to-morrow.”

“To-morrow I am engaged.”

“Well then, Wednesday.”

“It will not be possible for me to go to the Red House,” said Anthony in an odd, unyielding tone.

Mr Bennett gave a long “Whew!”

Ada said with a pout, “O, but you must!” and Mrs Bennett came to the rescue with the unconsciousness which constituted a real charm in Anthony’s eyes.

“It will be too hot for us to drive there just yet. Ada and I must go some day when I am a little less overdone and the weather is cooler.”

Mr Bennett was sufficiently shrewd to be alive both to the jar and to a perception that the subject was one which had better be allowed to drop.

“It is hot, as you say, my dear, and perhaps it would be as well to wait until Mannering is about again. Try a little of that Sauterne, Miles; capital stuff for this weather. Well, Ada, what have you been doing with yourself? Warren told me he had seen you at the station.”

It was Ada’s turn to look discomposed.

“The station? O yes, I remember. I walked across to see whether the Mannerses came by the four-o’clock train. I forgot that I had been out of the garden when you asked me,” she said, with an elaboration of openness which was unnecessary, as Anthony had no suspicions to be allayed.

“O, he’s been asking you, has he?” said Mr Bennett jocosely. “It’s lucky you can explain yourself, or poor Warren would have put his foot in it.”

“Mr Warren!” said Ada with scorn.

“Come, come, what has the poor man done? Upon my word, I should have thought young ladies would consider him a good-looking, agreeable young fellow. I am sure you did when you first knew him, Ada, eh?”

“I don’t know what I thought once,” said Ada, looking down, and smiling prettily again; “all I know is that I don’t admire him now.”

If Anthony wanted mollifying,—which was perhaps not the case, although this family party had not seemed to go quite as smoothly as those which had preceded it,—this little speech effected its purpose. He liked the covert homage, and, congratulating himself upon the good-humour which Mr Bennett’s rather trying allusions could not ruffle, roused himself into the old brightness which only now came in occasional flashes. Ada was enchanted, shook back her long curl, and put out all her attractions; and Anthony, walking home through the quiet lanes sweet with the dewy freshness of a summer night, dreamed his new dream with a better success. Only, alas, even in dreams there are jangled notes, struggles, interruptions. People’s faces come and go, and look sadly at us, changing often, just as the joy of their presence makes itself felt. Every now and then out of Ada’s face other eyes looked at him; eyes that were grave and true and tender, and full of a trust that had never failed, although he had read it wrongly.

Chapter Twenty One.“While friends we were, the hot debatesThat rose ’twixt you and me!Now we are mere associatesAnd never disagree.”Fraser’sMagazine.Anthony’s engagement, coming so soon after the other affair, made a little sensation in the neighbourhood. Things die out so quickly that, except in the more immediate Thorpe circle, his supposed act of injustice might have ceased to interest people; but the young man was so antagonistic, so sore, so fierce with all the world, that there was nothing for it but to take the position he insisted upon. The news of his engagement gave something pleasanter to talk about. There were a few injured mothers, but the gentlemen generally pronounced that he had shown his sense by making up his mind to marry Bennett’s niece. The Bennetts were favourites, and held a thoroughly respectable place in the county; and though Anthony might have done better as to family, every one felt that a sort of cloud had just touched him, and was on the whole glad that the Bennetts should be rewarded for their hospitality and liberality and conservatism by seeing their niece well married. As for the Squire, who had been more ruffled and made uneasy by the consequences of his own coolness than he himself knew, he came into the room where Winifred and Bessie were together, chuckling and rubbing his hands.“So there’s to be a wedding to waken us all up,” he said briskly. “You know all about it, girls, of course. I’m always the last in the place to hear a bit of news—but there!”“But there!—you always know it before we’ve time to tell you,” Bessie said saucily. “Is that what you mean, papa?”“You’ll find out what I mean one day, when you won’t like it, Miss Pert,” said the Squire, pulling her hair. “I must say Anthony Miles has shown greater sense than I should have expected. He’s just the man to have made a fool of himself. If he’d not been so confounded touchy about that business of Pitt’s, I’d have walked down and wished him joy; but I suppose that won’t do,—not just at first, eh, Winifred?”“No, indeed,” said Winifred, her face flushing.“I suppose not,” said Mr Chester, regretfully. “Those young fellows fly off at such tangents, there’s no knowing where to take them. One would think I’d been the one to set that report going, and I’m sure, for his fathers sake, I’d have given a hundred pounds—well, it’s over and done now, and can’t be helped; people do say there was no real harm in it when old Tregennas left it in his hands, but I wouldn’t have believed it, I wouldn’t have believed it. And then he goes and fights shy of the friends who would have stuck by him if they could.”“Papa, he never did it. How can he help being hurt with you all, when you will not trust him!”Winifred’s face had grown pale after the flush, but her voice did not tremble, and she looked at her father with clear steadfast eyes which always affected him, though, oddly enough, they often gave him a twinge of discomfort, and a little irritated him into obstinacy.“Nonsense, Winifred,” he said sharply, while he winced. “He has never so much as denied it. Women shouldn’t talk of what they don’t understand. And it hasn’t anything to do with his getting married, has it? I wish you to tell Mrs Miles that it’s given me a great deal of pleasure to hear of this match, and you and Bess had better drive into Underham and call on the Bennetts.”He was really desirous by this time to mend the breach, and perhaps a little secretly relieved that Mr Pitt’s other idea about Anthony had been proved so erroneous. Before all this had happened, and while Anthony had been a poorer man, a marriage between him and Winifred, although it had never presented itself to his imagination, would have met with no opposition from him, except the fret which arose from a little personal dislike, natural enough between the two characters. But since a breath of dishonour had rested upon the young man, it would have been a bitter blow to the Squire to have been forced to give him his daughter. He could by this time make some excuses for him, for his father’s sake,—indeed, now that he was not constantly meeting him, and getting irritated by his schemes, he really liked him a good deal more heartily than he had ever done before. But that would not have availed in such a trial. Therefore he now felt a certain amount of gratitude to him for removing the vague uneasiness which every now and then cropped up when he looked at Winifred or remembered shrewd Mr Pitt. He even spoke sharply to Bessie, who yawned and declared it was too hot to go to Underham.“You’ll go where your sister bids you. Winifred, don’t let that child give herself airs to you. If she does, speak to me. I’ll get a governess again, or pack her off to school, or something.”“I wonder who would mind that most,” said Bessie, jumping up and hugging him.“That’s very fine. I know somebody who’d cry her eyes out over backboards and French exercises, and all the rest of it. Not but what I believe your mother would have had you do it,” said the Squire, with a sudden wistful look at his favourite.“She is not so bad as she seems, papa,” said Winifred, rousing herself. “We read every morning, and she really works hard. Mr Anderson is quite satisfied.”“Well, mind she doesn’t get her headaches again,” her father said, veering round to another anxiety. “I’d rather she only knew her ABC than get headaches, and I’m not sure you’re careful enough, Winifred. Do you hear, Bess? Go out for a scamper on the pony when you’re tired of all this work. You’re not so strong as your sister.” Winifred did not answer. Something crossed her face so quickly that only the tenderest watcher could have seen it, a look which is very sad on those young faces. There is no storm or impatience in it, but a kind of weary protest. You hear it sometimes in a voice. The Squire went on with his injunctions about Underham and Miss Lovell.“I’m ready enough to be on friendly terms,” were his parting words, “only one doesn’t know on which side to meet these touchy young fellows. But this marriage looks as if he were coming to his senses.”“And we are to smooth over everything,” said Bessie, shutting her book and jumping up. “I don’t care to smooth it now that Anthony has been so stupid. That horrid Miss Lovell! Don’t you know how she walks, holding her hand out stiffly—so. You needn’t look shocked, Winnie dear, for she does, and I know she is horrid.”“Don’t say anything more about it, please,” Winifred pleaded, with a look of pain. “I am going to order the carriage at four o’clock.”“I hate them all, and I hate going,” said Bessie rebelliously. “Well?” as her sister made no answer to this downright statement.“Well?”“Don’t you mean to scold, or at least talk me into my proper behaviour?”“You must learn to find what you call your proper behaviour for yourself,” said Winifred, trying to smile brightly, as she looked into the girl’s dancing eyes. But her own suddenly filled with tears, and just as quickly Bessie’s arms were round her.“Something is the matter, I know, and you may as well tell me, Winnie, or I shall be obliged to find it out. Something is making you unhappy. Is it about Anthony?”The hot colour flashed into Winifred’s cheeks, but she was too honest to give an evasive answer, and said, holding Bessie’s clasping hands, and pausing for a moment between her sentences,—“I think it is, dear. Anthony has suffered cruelly from this wicked report. And it is so miserable between us all, when—we used to be so happy—”She stopped. She had been speaking in a low, almost humble voice, as if her heart felt a pang of shame in its sorrow.“Anthony doesn’t care for her,” said Bessie, shaking her head with a little experienced air. “He can’t, because she isn’t really nice. I believe he has been stupid enough to do it because he was cross.”Was it true?—this dread, that even Bessie could put into words? And if it was—O poor, poor Anthony!The girls drove into Underham that afternoon, when the extreme heat of the day was supposed to be over. But there still remained a dry parching oppression in the air, the long weedy grasses hung listlessly one above the other, without a breeze to shake the dust from the motionless leaves, the pretty green hedges were all whitened and dead looking. Without any thought of avoiding it, it almost seemed to Winifred, as she drove along, as if the pain of the visit would be unendurable. But there was no such relief as hearing that Mrs Bennett and Miss Lovell were not at home, and the sisters were ushered into the comfortable drawing-room where Ada sat with a somewhat too apparent consciousness of being prepared to receive visitors, and quite disposed to make a little show off of the dignity she considered appropriate to the occasion.“It was very kind of you to come in this heat. My aunt wished me to drive with her, but I really thought it too oppressive. Don’t you find it very trying?”“I do not think we thought about it,” said Winifred, truly.“Ah, then you are so strong. It must be very nice to be so strong, and not to be obliged to think so much of one’s self. Now, I am obliged to be so careful, for if I were to go out in the sun, very likely I should have quite a headache.”It was so difficult to be sympathetic over this possibility, that Winifred found it hard to frame a suitable answer, and was grateful to Mrs Bennett for coming in at the moment, and presenting another outlet for conversation. Bessie was sitting upright, rigidly and girlishly contemptuous, and subjects seemed alarmingly few.“My father begged me to leave his card for Mr Bennett,” Winifred said at last. “He would have come himself if some magistrate’s business had not been in the way, but he is such a dreadfully conscientious magistrate, that all our little persuasions are quite hopeless.”“I hope he is not very severe,—the poor people are so much to be pitied,” said kindly Mrs Bennett. “Only think if one was starving! I am sure I should be very likely to take a joint or something.”“No, he is not very severe,” Winifred said hesitating, with her thoughts wandering. “It is rather that he has such strict ideas of uprightness that he finds it hard to make excuses—”She stopped suddenly, and the colour faded out of her face. Looking at Mrs Bennett, she had not heard the door open, nor seen Ada’s rippling smiles, nor known that Anthony had come behind her, until a general movement made her look round, and then her start and change of colour gave an unlucky point to the words. Fortunately, Ada, who had longed that Anthony should come in, was triumphant, and not quick enough to read any discomfiture, claiming him at once with a show of possession.“O Anthony, have you seen Mr Mannering? He has been here and was so nice. He has asked us all to a garden party on Saturday, on purpose to show me his flowers. He asked me what time would be best, and I said four to seven, and we promised to be there punctually. I told him I would tell you all about it, but he says he shall write a formal invitation, so you are sure to have it, though of course I answered for you. I dare say you will be there,” Ada went on, with a gracious patronage of Winifred.But Winifred was not likely to notice such small affronts, although at another, time she might not have been so meek. She was looking at Ada and wondering. Was this indeed his ideal? Could he be satisfied? There was a sort of bewilderment in recalling the fastidious Anthony of past days, which hardly allowed her to answer Ada, who, however, was too content with her position to require much. Nothing could be more delightful to her than to queen it before Winifred and Bessie, and to dwell on the party which was to be given in her honour; and, without any real ill-nature, she liked to feel that she was in possession of what she fancied was the ambition of all womankind, an acknowledged lover, and thus exalted above Miss Chester, who had always seemed to her a little unapproachable. In her turn she now felt herself placed on a serene altitude, and being there, it would have been impossible for her unimaginative nature to have conceived that adverse currents should be blowing. She went on cheerfully, when no one answered her,—“The great thing is that it should be fine. I do so hope it will be fine, don’t you, Anthony?”“Yes—if you have set your heart upon it,” he said, with a little shortness, for which he hated himself. But even to be called Anthony grated upon him at this moment, and he carefully avoided using her name.“Of course I have, and so have you, too. Will you come here first?”“I am sorry to say I cannot be there. I shall be in London on Thursday night.”He said it not unkindly, for it struck him sharply that it was hard upon Ada, but he made no attempt to soften the words, and turned immediately to speak to Mrs Bennett, who was talking kind little placid talk to Winifred. Ada opened her eyes for a moment’s astonishment, and then laughed.“O, London must wait, of course! Aunt Henrietta, do you hear? Anthony has the most absurd idea that we shall let him go to London before Mr Mannering’s party!”Even silken fetters can cut, and something had nettled Anthony throughout the conversation; but he kept the irritation very fairly out of his reply, only saying earnestly,—“I am particularly sorry to do what you dislike, but there can be no question of my going. The London business has already been neglected too long.”Ada still believed in her own invincibility. “He will come,—I shall make him,” she said, smiling and nodding.There was nothing more to be said, and Winifred, who had almost against her will been garnering impressions, felt that escape was possible. Anthony had rather pointedly abstained from addressing her. She was not quite sure how much of the strain and oppression was due to her own feelings, but her heart ached under some new, sad weight as they drove away.

“While friends we were, the hot debatesThat rose ’twixt you and me!Now we are mere associatesAnd never disagree.”Fraser’sMagazine.

“While friends we were, the hot debatesThat rose ’twixt you and me!Now we are mere associatesAnd never disagree.”Fraser’sMagazine.

Anthony’s engagement, coming so soon after the other affair, made a little sensation in the neighbourhood. Things die out so quickly that, except in the more immediate Thorpe circle, his supposed act of injustice might have ceased to interest people; but the young man was so antagonistic, so sore, so fierce with all the world, that there was nothing for it but to take the position he insisted upon. The news of his engagement gave something pleasanter to talk about. There were a few injured mothers, but the gentlemen generally pronounced that he had shown his sense by making up his mind to marry Bennett’s niece. The Bennetts were favourites, and held a thoroughly respectable place in the county; and though Anthony might have done better as to family, every one felt that a sort of cloud had just touched him, and was on the whole glad that the Bennetts should be rewarded for their hospitality and liberality and conservatism by seeing their niece well married. As for the Squire, who had been more ruffled and made uneasy by the consequences of his own coolness than he himself knew, he came into the room where Winifred and Bessie were together, chuckling and rubbing his hands.

“So there’s to be a wedding to waken us all up,” he said briskly. “You know all about it, girls, of course. I’m always the last in the place to hear a bit of news—but there!”

“But there!—you always know it before we’ve time to tell you,” Bessie said saucily. “Is that what you mean, papa?”

“You’ll find out what I mean one day, when you won’t like it, Miss Pert,” said the Squire, pulling her hair. “I must say Anthony Miles has shown greater sense than I should have expected. He’s just the man to have made a fool of himself. If he’d not been so confounded touchy about that business of Pitt’s, I’d have walked down and wished him joy; but I suppose that won’t do,—not just at first, eh, Winifred?”

“No, indeed,” said Winifred, her face flushing.

“I suppose not,” said Mr Chester, regretfully. “Those young fellows fly off at such tangents, there’s no knowing where to take them. One would think I’d been the one to set that report going, and I’m sure, for his fathers sake, I’d have given a hundred pounds—well, it’s over and done now, and can’t be helped; people do say there was no real harm in it when old Tregennas left it in his hands, but I wouldn’t have believed it, I wouldn’t have believed it. And then he goes and fights shy of the friends who would have stuck by him if they could.”

“Papa, he never did it. How can he help being hurt with you all, when you will not trust him!”

Winifred’s face had grown pale after the flush, but her voice did not tremble, and she looked at her father with clear steadfast eyes which always affected him, though, oddly enough, they often gave him a twinge of discomfort, and a little irritated him into obstinacy.

“Nonsense, Winifred,” he said sharply, while he winced. “He has never so much as denied it. Women shouldn’t talk of what they don’t understand. And it hasn’t anything to do with his getting married, has it? I wish you to tell Mrs Miles that it’s given me a great deal of pleasure to hear of this match, and you and Bess had better drive into Underham and call on the Bennetts.”

He was really desirous by this time to mend the breach, and perhaps a little secretly relieved that Mr Pitt’s other idea about Anthony had been proved so erroneous. Before all this had happened, and while Anthony had been a poorer man, a marriage between him and Winifred, although it had never presented itself to his imagination, would have met with no opposition from him, except the fret which arose from a little personal dislike, natural enough between the two characters. But since a breath of dishonour had rested upon the young man, it would have been a bitter blow to the Squire to have been forced to give him his daughter. He could by this time make some excuses for him, for his father’s sake,—indeed, now that he was not constantly meeting him, and getting irritated by his schemes, he really liked him a good deal more heartily than he had ever done before. But that would not have availed in such a trial. Therefore he now felt a certain amount of gratitude to him for removing the vague uneasiness which every now and then cropped up when he looked at Winifred or remembered shrewd Mr Pitt. He even spoke sharply to Bessie, who yawned and declared it was too hot to go to Underham.

“You’ll go where your sister bids you. Winifred, don’t let that child give herself airs to you. If she does, speak to me. I’ll get a governess again, or pack her off to school, or something.”

“I wonder who would mind that most,” said Bessie, jumping up and hugging him.

“That’s very fine. I know somebody who’d cry her eyes out over backboards and French exercises, and all the rest of it. Not but what I believe your mother would have had you do it,” said the Squire, with a sudden wistful look at his favourite.

“She is not so bad as she seems, papa,” said Winifred, rousing herself. “We read every morning, and she really works hard. Mr Anderson is quite satisfied.”

“Well, mind she doesn’t get her headaches again,” her father said, veering round to another anxiety. “I’d rather she only knew her ABC than get headaches, and I’m not sure you’re careful enough, Winifred. Do you hear, Bess? Go out for a scamper on the pony when you’re tired of all this work. You’re not so strong as your sister.” Winifred did not answer. Something crossed her face so quickly that only the tenderest watcher could have seen it, a look which is very sad on those young faces. There is no storm or impatience in it, but a kind of weary protest. You hear it sometimes in a voice. The Squire went on with his injunctions about Underham and Miss Lovell.

“I’m ready enough to be on friendly terms,” were his parting words, “only one doesn’t know on which side to meet these touchy young fellows. But this marriage looks as if he were coming to his senses.”

“And we are to smooth over everything,” said Bessie, shutting her book and jumping up. “I don’t care to smooth it now that Anthony has been so stupid. That horrid Miss Lovell! Don’t you know how she walks, holding her hand out stiffly—so. You needn’t look shocked, Winnie dear, for she does, and I know she is horrid.”

“Don’t say anything more about it, please,” Winifred pleaded, with a look of pain. “I am going to order the carriage at four o’clock.”

“I hate them all, and I hate going,” said Bessie rebelliously. “Well?” as her sister made no answer to this downright statement.

“Well?”

“Don’t you mean to scold, or at least talk me into my proper behaviour?”

“You must learn to find what you call your proper behaviour for yourself,” said Winifred, trying to smile brightly, as she looked into the girl’s dancing eyes. But her own suddenly filled with tears, and just as quickly Bessie’s arms were round her.

“Something is the matter, I know, and you may as well tell me, Winnie, or I shall be obliged to find it out. Something is making you unhappy. Is it about Anthony?”

The hot colour flashed into Winifred’s cheeks, but she was too honest to give an evasive answer, and said, holding Bessie’s clasping hands, and pausing for a moment between her sentences,—

“I think it is, dear. Anthony has suffered cruelly from this wicked report. And it is so miserable between us all, when—we used to be so happy—”

She stopped. She had been speaking in a low, almost humble voice, as if her heart felt a pang of shame in its sorrow.

“Anthony doesn’t care for her,” said Bessie, shaking her head with a little experienced air. “He can’t, because she isn’t really nice. I believe he has been stupid enough to do it because he was cross.”

Was it true?—this dread, that even Bessie could put into words? And if it was—O poor, poor Anthony!

The girls drove into Underham that afternoon, when the extreme heat of the day was supposed to be over. But there still remained a dry parching oppression in the air, the long weedy grasses hung listlessly one above the other, without a breeze to shake the dust from the motionless leaves, the pretty green hedges were all whitened and dead looking. Without any thought of avoiding it, it almost seemed to Winifred, as she drove along, as if the pain of the visit would be unendurable. But there was no such relief as hearing that Mrs Bennett and Miss Lovell were not at home, and the sisters were ushered into the comfortable drawing-room where Ada sat with a somewhat too apparent consciousness of being prepared to receive visitors, and quite disposed to make a little show off of the dignity she considered appropriate to the occasion.

“It was very kind of you to come in this heat. My aunt wished me to drive with her, but I really thought it too oppressive. Don’t you find it very trying?”

“I do not think we thought about it,” said Winifred, truly.

“Ah, then you are so strong. It must be very nice to be so strong, and not to be obliged to think so much of one’s self. Now, I am obliged to be so careful, for if I were to go out in the sun, very likely I should have quite a headache.”

It was so difficult to be sympathetic over this possibility, that Winifred found it hard to frame a suitable answer, and was grateful to Mrs Bennett for coming in at the moment, and presenting another outlet for conversation. Bessie was sitting upright, rigidly and girlishly contemptuous, and subjects seemed alarmingly few.

“My father begged me to leave his card for Mr Bennett,” Winifred said at last. “He would have come himself if some magistrate’s business had not been in the way, but he is such a dreadfully conscientious magistrate, that all our little persuasions are quite hopeless.”

“I hope he is not very severe,—the poor people are so much to be pitied,” said kindly Mrs Bennett. “Only think if one was starving! I am sure I should be very likely to take a joint or something.”

“No, he is not very severe,” Winifred said hesitating, with her thoughts wandering. “It is rather that he has such strict ideas of uprightness that he finds it hard to make excuses—”

She stopped suddenly, and the colour faded out of her face. Looking at Mrs Bennett, she had not heard the door open, nor seen Ada’s rippling smiles, nor known that Anthony had come behind her, until a general movement made her look round, and then her start and change of colour gave an unlucky point to the words. Fortunately, Ada, who had longed that Anthony should come in, was triumphant, and not quick enough to read any discomfiture, claiming him at once with a show of possession.

“O Anthony, have you seen Mr Mannering? He has been here and was so nice. He has asked us all to a garden party on Saturday, on purpose to show me his flowers. He asked me what time would be best, and I said four to seven, and we promised to be there punctually. I told him I would tell you all about it, but he says he shall write a formal invitation, so you are sure to have it, though of course I answered for you. I dare say you will be there,” Ada went on, with a gracious patronage of Winifred.

But Winifred was not likely to notice such small affronts, although at another, time she might not have been so meek. She was looking at Ada and wondering. Was this indeed his ideal? Could he be satisfied? There was a sort of bewilderment in recalling the fastidious Anthony of past days, which hardly allowed her to answer Ada, who, however, was too content with her position to require much. Nothing could be more delightful to her than to queen it before Winifred and Bessie, and to dwell on the party which was to be given in her honour; and, without any real ill-nature, she liked to feel that she was in possession of what she fancied was the ambition of all womankind, an acknowledged lover, and thus exalted above Miss Chester, who had always seemed to her a little unapproachable. In her turn she now felt herself placed on a serene altitude, and being there, it would have been impossible for her unimaginative nature to have conceived that adverse currents should be blowing. She went on cheerfully, when no one answered her,—

“The great thing is that it should be fine. I do so hope it will be fine, don’t you, Anthony?”

“Yes—if you have set your heart upon it,” he said, with a little shortness, for which he hated himself. But even to be called Anthony grated upon him at this moment, and he carefully avoided using her name.

“Of course I have, and so have you, too. Will you come here first?”

“I am sorry to say I cannot be there. I shall be in London on Thursday night.”

He said it not unkindly, for it struck him sharply that it was hard upon Ada, but he made no attempt to soften the words, and turned immediately to speak to Mrs Bennett, who was talking kind little placid talk to Winifred. Ada opened her eyes for a moment’s astonishment, and then laughed.

“O, London must wait, of course! Aunt Henrietta, do you hear? Anthony has the most absurd idea that we shall let him go to London before Mr Mannering’s party!”

Even silken fetters can cut, and something had nettled Anthony throughout the conversation; but he kept the irritation very fairly out of his reply, only saying earnestly,—

“I am particularly sorry to do what you dislike, but there can be no question of my going. The London business has already been neglected too long.”

Ada still believed in her own invincibility. “He will come,—I shall make him,” she said, smiling and nodding.

There was nothing more to be said, and Winifred, who had almost against her will been garnering impressions, felt that escape was possible. Anthony had rather pointedly abstained from addressing her. She was not quite sure how much of the strain and oppression was due to her own feelings, but her heart ached under some new, sad weight as they drove away.

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